Artificial intelligence actress Tilly Norwood, created by London company Particle 6, has landed her first starring role in a feature film. The production, titled “Misaligned,” is a comedy-drama that the company describes as a “hybrid production,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The film takes place in the “Tillyverse”, a surreal digital world located “in the cloud”. The plot follows Tilly, an AI being with no physical body, no childhood, no lived experiences, who only has access to the experiences of others.

According to the official synopsis, “things get complicated when a seductive and dishonest dark web bot convinces her to abandon her limits and start developing desires, impulses and ambitions of her own.” As she becomes “terrifyingly human,” she becomes more famous and begins to feel “ashamed that her own existence has been built on the foundation of all humanity.”

Collaboration between AI and human talent

According to Variety, the company, founded by Eline van der Velden, defends the project as an example of collaboration between AI and human talent.

Van der Velden stated that “AI can support high-quality narrative film production, but only with a large dose of human experience, skill, judgment and time,” adding that “the filmmakers who succeed in the next decade will be those who bring decades of narrative instinct to these new tools.”

The company claims to have retrained its team of more than 30 people for this hybrid project, in which traditional creatives and AI specialists work together.

Reviews

The announcement revived controversy in Hollywood over the use of artificial intelligence. The actors union SAG-AFTRA had already issued a harsh statement condemning Norwood, stating that “she is not an actress, she is a character generated by a computer program that was trained with the work of countless professional performers, without permission or compensation.”

The union warned that the use of these “synthetic artists” could endanger the livelihoods of actors and devalue human art. Figures like Emily Blunt called the creation “really scary” and called on agencies not to “take away the human connection from us,” while Natasha Lyonne suggested boycotting any agency that represents AI.